


When the Lights Come On

by nostalgicatsea



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Tony Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/pseuds/nostalgicatsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d thought, once, that stepping down from the Avengers was something Tony needed or thought was the right thing to do; now it seemed more like penance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Lights Come On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/gifts).



They’re lying down on the bed in the middle of the afternoon, some old song playing like a forgotten murmur on the radio when Steve turns to face Tony.

“Do you miss it?” he asks.

The words come out like a soft exhale, but in the space between them, they’re loud enough to break the near slumber they’re in.

“Miss what?”

He hesitates. It’s new, this thing between them, fragile; he doesn’t know if he’s going to cross a line, but he remembers how Tony looked the other day in the workshop and continues. “Being in the suit,” he says. “Flying.”

He can see Tony in his mind, the way he’d been so still and so quiet, his gaze unseeing as a holographic Iron Man suit rotated idly in front of him, washing him in a blue that reminded him of the remote Arctic. Something aches inside him at the memory, dull and distant, heavy, like a rock sinking to the bottom of a deep well.

It had been a terribly lonely sight.

Tony stays silent for a while, his expression inscrutable.

“Sometimes,” he finally admits, and Steve's chest deflates like it’s been popped, a long breath spooling out of him like a sigh. “But I’m fine, you know, I’m not weeping over pictures of my armor every night before bed if that’s what you’re worried about.” He gives him a small, crooked smile, but Steve can read the lie in it.

“But you still miss it,” he says as a result, and Tony looks away from him uncomfortably, smile fading.

He wonders if he’s pushing too far, too much before Tony breaks the brief, but tense silence.

“Yeah,” he says with an honesty that catches Steve off guard. His voice is weary in a way that Steve’s never heard it before, that one word burdened with all he’s had to carry these past few months—the responsibility, the anger, the grief.

The mistakes that he never lets himself forget.

He’d thought, once, that stepping down from the Avengers was something Tony needed or thought was the right thing to do; now it seemed more like penance.

 _You’re more than your mistakes_ , he wants to say, but he knows how Tony would react to that so he reaches out, slides his hand into Tony’s and squeezes a wordless reply, careful not to touch him apart from that one point of contact. He can feel how tightly wound Tony is.

They stay like that, not looking at each other or talking, until Tony squeezes back gently and Steve thinks it’s okay to talk again.

“Let’s go out for a ride,” he says, and when Tony doesn’t object, he adds, “I want to show you something.”

He can feel the refusal coming even before Tony says it in the way that he stiffens up again, but Tony grips his hand tighter instead of shutting him out, and the knot of anxiety in his stomach, while not exactly loosening up, changes to one of anticipation. “Only if you promise me that I’ll get there in one piece," he says as he sits up, "I’ve seen how fast you ride that thing.” He's still tense, but he's grinning lopsidedly at him, and gratitude flares up inside Steve at the sight, a bright thing at the center of his chest sparked by the trust Tony has in him.

"Says the man with a flying suit of armor and an extensive collection of fast cars," he says fondly as they get out of bed, and before Tony can reply, he loops an arm around Tony's waist and brings him in to press a tender kiss against his lips, warm and unhurried, full of everything he wants to say. **  
**

 

There aren’t any cars on this part of the road so Steve lets go, pushing himself and his bike hard so that the wind buffets him from all sides and his world narrows down to his bike and Tony’s warm, solid presence at his back. There’s no room for conversations out here; it’s too loud, the exhaust roaring under him and the wind howling past as he leaves the base far behind, but he’s fine with that. He’s not in the mood for talking, not yet, and he knows Tony feels the same way.

Tony had gone flying sometimes, back when the original team was together, and he suspects that it did the same thing for Tony as riding does for him when running or hitting bags isn't enough. There’s something about the solitude and the freedom, the way that the open road and vast, empty sky quieted the mind and drove everything out, let them just _be_ , that acted like a siren call for people like them.

Riding isn’t flying, he knows, but it’s the closest thing to it that he can offer Tony, and he hopes that it’s enough for now.

The dirt road changes into a paved one as he reaches a thruway, the space between the trees widening so that the sky sweeps out over them to the horizon, unobstructed by the overhanging branches and thick foliage that had broken it up in the forested area around the new Avengers facility. There isn’t anyone out here either, save for one truck some distance away, so Steve lets himself look up for several seconds before he shifts his attention back on the road again. The moon is visible even though it's late afternoon, a faint white crescent high above him, and he can imagine how it’ll look like later in a sea of stars stretching out as far as the eye can see. There are some good things about living upstate now, things that make the relative seclusion of the base easier to bear, and the night view’s one of them—but Steve misses the city all the same, and he can't help but look forward to seeing skyscrapers crowding the sky and throngs of people and cars choking the streets.

The drive goes smoothly, but takes longer than expected once they hit traffic, and by the time they leave New Jersey and get on the GW, large swathes of the sky have turned pink and lavender. Tony tightens his arms around him as they approach the bridge, finally aware of where exactly they are now that they're on familiar ground, but doesn’t say a word until they get off West Side Highway and onto West 46th Street. The bike simmers down to a low growl as he brings them to a leisurely pace, and Tony leans in so Steve can hear him.

“Am I allowed to ask where we're going, or is this one of those things where I have to wait until the very end to find out?” he asks.

“We’re almost there,” Steve replies in lieu of giving a direct answer, and even though he's being vague, Tony gives him a noncommittal hum instead of pressing him; he doesn't try to decipher it, too busy concentrating on not overthinking things as he gets closer to his destination.

He makes his way down a few more streets, going much slower now, and before long he pulls up in front of a tired, narrow walk-up wedged between two broad ones. It’s a nondescript residential building, nothing marking it as any different from any of the other ones lining the street because it isn’t any different, but now that he’s there, he’s not sure if this is a good idea. Doubt stirs uneasily inside him as he comes to a full stop, a dangerous beast that he knows will grow more restless the longer he stays in one spot, so before he can second guess himself, he switches off the engine and gets off the bike, kicking the stand down once Tony slides off to stand next to him. 

“I'll explain once we're inside,” he says, and something about the way he sounds makes Tony bite back whatever he's about to say, makes him walk with him towards the place he used to live in after he woke up from the ice, alone and isolated in a city and time that were no longer his.

 

It’s been a long time since he was last here, a couple of years to be exact, but the roof is still the same, everything just the way it'd been before he’d gone to D.C.

He turns to the west, watching the last rays of the dying sun bathe the sides of the buildings clustered in front of him. New York’s a city that comes alive at night, and it’s a raucous cacophony now, blaring car horns and loud chatter filling up the streets below as everyone heads home from a long day of work. The noise is loud, but comforting in its familiarity, and he lets it wash over him as he crosses his arms and soaks in the view.

“I used to come up to the roof sometimes and look out at the city when I lived here,” he says. “Tried to see what was new and what was familiar, see if it was still home. And every time, I’d see Stark Tower.”

“That big, ugly building in New York,” Tony says wryly.

“That’s the one,” he laughs. He’d almost forgotten about that. “Thought it represented everything I didn’t like or understand about the twenty-first century, the whole glitz and glamour and all the rest." He swallows hard, hesitating for a moment before continuing. "But I think the worst part about it was how it was the one link I had to my old life, and it was the thing that reminded me most that I was a long way from home.”

He resists the urge to glance down, running his palm over the top of the rough concrete wall instead. He hasn’t really talked about this with anyone, about what it was like right after he woke up. It's harder than he expects even though a few years have already gone by and he's long since accepted what had happened.

Tony opens his mouth to say something, but Steve shakes his head. “Let me finish,” he says, but he takes a moment to collect his thoughts. The tower gleams like a beacon in the distance, and Steve stares at it for a while, watching the A on its side light up. It’s tall and proud, the very definition of the future, of everything the Avengers stand for and work towards.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever find my place in the world again and for the longest time, I didn’t think I would,” he eventually says as he moves to face Tony. “But then you called, telling me you were getting the team together again and to come back to the tower and well...I found it. I found home.” He pauses for a moment, before he softly adds, “And I know you did too.”

He sees the moment that Tony gets it, understands all the things left unsaid between them.

“I’m going to mess up again,” Tony says, quiet certainty weighing down his every word. “Maybe not at first, but somewhere down the line.” He’s looking away now, his face tight, like he’s afraid to let himself hope for something he shouldn’t have.

“We’re all going to. That’s just the nature of our work.” He crooks a finger under Tony’s chin, tilting his head up. “Can’t save the world without taking big risks every now and then.”

Tony’s eyes are bright and fierce, his defiance almost enough to mask everything cracked and uncertain underneath, but not entirely. “And sometimes those big risks turn out to be the wrong call. A mistake,” he says.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he agrees. “But sometimes, a lot of times, we get things right. Like that.” He puts his hands on Tony’s shoulders, turning him to face the city again, nodding at all the lights that are starting to blink on all over Manhattan now that the sun has mostly set. “You made that happen. That’s all there because of you. Because of your tech, your sacrifice...all the calls you made because you're brave enough to try and make this world a better place. You keep thinking about the mistakes you’ve made that you’re forgetting all the good that you’ve done.”

"You sound like you’re about one step away from getting down on a knee right now," Tony says, but in the fading light, he’s all sunken shadows and tired lines, exhaustion and lingering self-doubt in his smirk so Steve continues, undeterred.

"I'm serious, Tony. God knows how much you try to make up for your mistakes, but that's not all you do. You've always been about building a better future. That's what drives you too, and that's something special." He clasps Tony's shoulder and makes sure to look him in the eye to drive the point home. "That's what makes you an Avenger," he says firmly.

Tony looks straight ahead, out to some place he can't see, and Steve starts to think it was a bad idea coming here when Tony replies, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "You and your pep talks," he says with a subdued laugh, and it isn’t an answer, it isn’t him saying that he’s coming back, but he slips his hand into Steve’s and it feels like a promise so Steve just returns his smile and holds on tight as they watch, side by side, the city coming to life around them, brilliant and incandescent in the darkness of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely not what you had in mind for your motorcycle ride prompt, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway, Neverever. Happy holidays!
> 
> Also, many thanks to [teaberryblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue) who helped me when I was stuck and at my wits' end.


End file.
